When I was very young, you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald, and you would basically go through them, circle things, and map out your viewing week.
William MonahanI always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.
William MonahanGetting the correct writer is simply like casting. You wouldn't hire an actor in order to tell him how to work. He knows how to work, which is why you hired him.
William MonahanFor me, film has been good because I'm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in the only literary form in which you can still make money. There are no famous novelists, not as novelists used to be famous.
William MonahanI never work until I have a deadline. You have to fit so much in a given day that you just don't get serious until you know when the deadline is.
William MonahanI think the only real referent for anybody writing drama is probably Hamlet. You have the most extreme tragic drama, this sort of blood-boltered thing, but it's also very funny, which is simply a matter of the playwright being alive and observant and entertaining, and understanding not only the world but what will play.
William Monahan